By Fayemi Adegoroye
The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented disruption for the
global health and development community. Patients, especially those with
underlying health issues that require continuous management, have found
their lives complicated by challenges of access, safety, supply chain
logistics, and financial stress like never before.
The short-term implications of this global challenge are evident
everywhere, but the long-term consequences of the pandemic — how it
will reshape health services delivery and accessibility in the post
COVID-19 world — have started engaging the thoughts and attention of
forward-looking service providers.
Experts have submitted that the outcry in virtually every country about
the lack of equipment and supplies to test for and protect against
COVID-19 will lead countries to reexamine their supply chains for
critical health and livelihood related products.
For a nation like Nigeria, it was generally expected that this predicted
wave of nationalism would catch us on wrong footing, given the fact that
we have always lacked most of the required factors to develop a robust
innovative and responsive health services delivery model.
Wealthy Nigerians have often preferred travelling abroad for medical
treatment with the Minister of Health having been quoted as estimating
that the country spends over $1 billion annually on medical tourism.
Therefore it is a no-brainer that with the emerging new normal world, a
rethink of how healthcare and healthcare resources are accessed even by
the comfortable and well to-do citizens has become necessary. Healthcare
services delivery must undergo a transmutation from the physical, brick
and mortar format to a more tech-driven approach. Thus, the concept of
tech-for-health san borders cannot be dismissed lightly.
And Nigeria, now more than ever before, must confront using technology
to transform her healthcare delivery system in a way that ensures a
win-win for all.
The growth and sophistication of Nigeria’s telecommunications and ICT
sectors in the last two decades as well as the increasing global tilt
towards greater deployment of ICT for health (Health ICT) have continued
to point health service providers in the country in the direction of
embracing innovative new thinking required to strengthen and
revolutionize the health system.
Since 1989, when the first attempt at healthcare computerization was
recorded in the country, Nigeria had been expected to double up on her
effort in making steady progress towards making her health space become
strongly tech-driven.
It is on record that the Department of Computer Science and Engineering
at the Obafemi Awolowo University, in conjunction with the Obafemi
Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex (OAUTHC) and the University
of Kuopio (now the University of Eastern Finland) Computing Centre in
Finland, jointly established the country’s first project on health
informatics (HI) in 1989. Through this collaboration, they developed a
basic system for in-patient admissions, transfers, and discharges that
has been enhanced over the years and is now known as the Made in Nigeria
Primary Healthcare Information System (MINPHIS).
MINPHIS was the first digitalized hospital system in Nigeria to be
locally developed and deployed to keep electronic patient records and
generate various reports for health management. These reports include
patient status, medical history, and admissions details such as length
of stay, discharge summaries, mortality and morbidity data, and
operations.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic appears to be a game changer as the idea of
personalized clinic installed as an App on a patient’s mobile device
has now become firmly established in the country’s health delivery
space to take over from where MINPHIS and its other offshoots of the
past stopped.
For a country that has for long been reeling under the various negative
impacts of an underfunded health sector, the recent introduction of the
grassroots-targeted PDI App by Pre Diagnosis International, a private
sector, charity-driven, hybrid telehealth brand, is a commendable
initiative that could prove landmark in the nation’s quest to maximize
the scarce health resources at her disposal in the delivery of health
services to the populace.
Although there have been a few other telehealth platforms aimed largely
at the upper crust of the society, the uniqueness of the PDI App stems
from its focus on targeting poor, vulnerable Nigerians in, especially,
rural and semi urban parts of the country under an aggressive
charity-styled Reach, Rescue and Fortify mantra aimed at delivering
healthcare to two million vulnerable Nigerians annually.
The App is an interactive mobile application that gives users immediate
access to highly trained and experienced full time PDI doctors who can
assist them access quality healthcare from home, office, on a business
trip or vacation. With a meagre annual subscription, the user can obtain
and store latest blood pressure reading, heart health vitals, blood
sugar information, as well as other vital statistics required to
comprehensively evaluate the state of their health status. Also, the
user is able to access free quality consultation and treatment for a
myriad of ailments all year round without physically stepping out of his
or her home as the doctor may order an investigation, give a
prescription or counselling or initiate a referral to a secondary center
via the interaction. And all these and other benefits are accessible at
the payment of just the annual subscription and no other payment.
COVID-19 may have been a sudden and unexpected occurrence that has
triggered sad and unfortunate illnesses and deaths, jolting the world in
a way that has not been witnessed for several years. It may have,
however, begun to nudge us as a nation to re-invent ourselves in many
ways.
Efforts, such as the PDI innovative move to give patients full control
of their health via cheap, personalized telehealth solutions as well as
other Private-Public Partnerships (PPP) designed to improve the health
and well-being of citizens deserve full applause for helping to speed up
the re-shaping of Nigeria’s health sector.
-Fayemi Adegoroye is the Chief Project Officer of TECH4HEALTHNG, Lagos
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